Paper on photoacoustic imaging of human lymph nodes published in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine

Was first published online in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine (Lasers in Surgery and Medicine, vol.44, issue 6, 2012, DOI 10.1002/lsm.22058)

The work summarized in this paper was performed by researchers from BMPI (Diederik Grootendorst, Jithin Jose, Ton van Leeuwen, Wiendelt Steenbergen and Srirang Manohar) in strong collaboration with the Netherlands Cancer Institute Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (NKI-AVL) and the nanobiophysics group of the University of Twente.

In his technical medicine master graduation assignment in BMPI, Diederik Grootendorst started investigating the applicability of photoacoustic tomographic imaging as an intra-operative modality for examining the status of resected lymph nodes. In the summer of 2011 he continued this research as a PhD student from BMPI and the NKI-AVL.

In the current paper, the results from photoacoustic imaging on six resected suspect human lymph nodes from patients with melanoma are described. The photoacoustic images were obtained at different wavelengths and compared with histopathology and gross anatomical features. Multiple areas containing melanoma cells could be identified in the PA images, which proved that photoacoustic detection of melanoma metastases based on their melanin content is possible in resected human lymph nodes.

For more information about the paper and the work on photoacoustic imaging of melanoma lymph nodes, contact Diederik Grootendorst (D.J.Grootendorst@utwente.nl). For more information about other projects on (biomedical) photoacoustic imaging, contact dr. Srirang Manohar (s.manohar@utwente.nl).